El pretérito perfecto compuesto y el imperfecto narrativo en la prensa audiovisual peninsular

Abstract

The paper compares two Spanish verb forms, present perfect and imperfect, and analyzes them in two separate ‘special’ uses, when they seem to be employed instead of the pure simple past form. Thus, the present perfect is studied in connection with adverbs of temporal delimitation in the past, while the imperfect is studied in non-descriptive narrative contexts. We hypothesize that there is no neutralization of the functions of both forms in such cases, but that is only an extension of their expressive possibilities, due to the fact that both include a sense of simultaneity within their semantic configuration. In order to confirm this hypothesis, we use a corpus set of news from different Spanish media (radio and television).